


darling, i've been wishing my hardest

by aceofdiamonds



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-26
Updated: 2016-05-26
Packaged: 2018-06-10 18:37:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,353
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6969496
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aceofdiamonds/pseuds/aceofdiamonds
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>the ways in which sansa and jon's relationship changes</p><p>“You’re only my half-brother,” she says not long after the Bran incident and at once Jon takes this as an offensive, his mouth open in an angry retort, but she plows on, “but that doesn’t mean you’re not a Stark.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	darling, i've been wishing my hardest

**Author's Note:**

> this diverts from canon in that sansa is rescued from the vale by brienne and makes her way to castle black from there where it then ties in with the show canon of her and jon’s reunion. rickon isn't involved in this scenario. he comes later. maybe i simplified the battle at winterfell. maybe. i have something planned with all the starks reuniting to make up for skimming over it here. title is from seeing stars by borns.

  


half-brother (bastard)

  
For as long as she can remember Sansa has been her mother's daughter through and through. This has been both through nature, in the similarities of their personalities, to nurture, and the various ways Catelyn tried to shape Sansa into a proper young lady and the steps Sansa would take herself to become as close to her mother as possible.     
  
This extends, of course, to how she treats those around her. She can’t remember when she learned its meaning but she knows that from a fairly young age she knew that bastard meant different and that it meant Jon. Sansa’s always been an observant child and a clever one at that and she’s picked up on the way her mother uses this word around her half-brother, the subtle dismissals and settings that that set Jon apart from the rest of them despite his father being Eddard Stark, Warden of the North.

This confuses Sansa. She likes Jon -- he’s always up for playing knights and princesses with her, he tells her funny jokes sometimes that make her giggle into her hand, and only last week he had jumped into the river to save Bran when Sansa had turned her head away for a second and let him fall. He had taken the fall for that, too, because he knows what it means to try and please a parent, and he knows that Sansa is always trying her best to show what a lady she can be, even if that leads to baby brothers falling into rivers as she unhooks her dress from where it’s caught on a branch.

So Sansa really does like Jon, _almost_ as much as she loves Robb, who is one of the people Sansa loves the most. It’s why she’s confused because her mother says bastard like it’s a dirty word and that Jon is dirty along with it.

“You’re only my half-brother,” she says not long after the Bran incident and at once Jon takes this as an offensive, his mouth open in an angry retort, but she plows on, “but that doesn’t mean you’re not a Stark.”

He blinks at her, confused. “I’m a Snow,” he says.

“I know that,” Sansa replies, waving a hand impatiently. “I’m just saying: you’re still a Stark, and I’d like it better if you were called that rather than Snow.”

“I'm sorry that everything about me is not to your liking, Lady Sansa,” Jon simpers, deep in a bow, but when he raises his head he’s smiling a little, and so she smiles back.

“Be my dragon?” she asks, smiling sweetly, and laughing when he fakes a roar. “Come on. Let’s find everyone else -- I need my knights and my faithful adorers.”

“And Rickon?”

“He can be my pet,” Sansa replies, hitting Jon’s arm when he snorts. “Babies can’t play games properly yet.”

“I’ll count to five,” Jon warns, kicking his heel back in a show of the impatience of an angry dragon. “You better get your knights ready, Princess Sansa.”

Across Westeros there are things the divide the population -- this ranges from the North and South divide to sex to family to the blood that runs through their veins. Sansa is a romantic at heart; she likes to think that with a little kindness and the ability to bend your perspective that everyone can get along much better. Maybe Jon isn’t a full brother but Arya is her full sister and she annoys her just the same. Family is family.

(This fades slightly as they grow older and Sansa sets her eyes on the South and the golden princes that come with it. Now is when she begins to use bastard with all its dirty connotations. Still, though, Jon can be kind to her and she to him -- she gives him advice when he comes up to her and stutters about girls and he helps her out when she fumbles over a particularly hard set of reading Septa Mordane has asked her to learn. Their sibling relationship strains into a cordial one more suited to acquaintances -- not too close but civil most of the time. One day, Sansa is going to the South, to King’s Landing, and she won’t have the associations of bastard half-brothers dragging her down.)

  


.

 

 

brother

 

Her brothers drop by two and then again by one. Her sister is already gone, presumed dead, and her parents have been murdered in this bloody bloody war. All she has left is Jon, the other remaining Stark.

She feels stupid now, ridiculous, for all those times she parroted bastard and half-brother from her mother’s mouth. She loves her mother more than anything but she knows that there are more things to family than the twice-strong blood of biological family. Sansa has handfuls of memories of Jon being a part of her childhood, of games in the godswood and of conversations of futures far away from Winterfell and of protection and love and all the things that were always taken for granted - now she knows, now that she is alone, that these things are what bind her to Jon.

Margaery asks her once how she likes having so many brothers, knowing what it’s like with the number she has herself. It stabs at her, the way it always does, when she remembers she only has one left, but one is better than none, and so she smiles at Margaery and says that she never felt like she wasn’t loved. “My brother’s a member of the Night’s Watch -- they’ll save this place.”

Margaery points out gently that, “The Night’s Watch have no place in the politics of Westeros; they take no sides. I’m not sure your brother Jon Snow will be able to help you.”

But Margaery doesn’t know Jon like Sansa knows him. She doesn’t know that he’s stubborn to a fault, the two of them always the last to back down from an argument, or that he’s a worrier at heart, his brow always creased as he leaps from one problem to the next. Margaery doesn’t know what Sansa knows and what Sansa hopes - that if Jon knew the extent of Sansa’s struggles he wouldn’t hesitate to save her. She’s always had romantic notions, Septa Mordane never knew whether to encourage her or to prepare her for a world not like ones in old tales, but she knows that Jon has always wanted to be a knight, a protector of those in need, and right now she needs her brother more than ever.

“He’ll come,” she says, with all that faith she used to throw into her dreams of the South. Now she knows that she is Northern for a reason and that the North should stick together if any of them want to make it out alive.

She wants to see her brother. She wants to go home. She hopes that these two wishes aren’t mutually exclusive.

  


.

  


lord commander

 

Jon doesn’t come to her but eventually, after far too long and after far too much for her to endure, Sansa goes to him. She escapes Littlefinger’s clutches via Brienne of Tarth and Podrick Payne, the knights she never knew to wish for but to whom she owes her life.

She steps over Petyr’s body, aware of her growing knowledge that men are always so small in death, despite their efforts to appear otherwise in life, and tells Brienne that, “I think our best course of action is to go to the Lord Commander of the Night’s Watch.”

Brienne allows this with a bowed head because, “My promise to your Lady Mother was to take you to family and --”

“And the last of my family is up there fighting the dead risen if the rumours are to be believed,” Sansa finishes for her. She extends her hand to Brienne and then to Podrick, shakes into a new alliance, this one sturdier, safer, than the last. “Please lead us, Ser.”

It’s almost too much when they reach Castle Black and Sansa asks for Jon and when he appears, so whole and so alive after so long. It’s _almost_ too much. But not quite.

It feels so good to be held by someone who knows what this is all about, despite their wildly different paths to get here. Sansa pushes her face into the furs of Jon’s shoulders and her hands lock tight at his waist and it’s enough to feel him embrace her and to know that despite everything this cruel war has thrown at them, at least two of them have found their way back to each other.

“You probably wish I was Arya or Bran or Rickon,” Sansa says quietly, after, when it’s just the two of them in Jon’s chambers. “You always got along better with them than me.”

“None of that counts for anything now, Sansa,” he says, tone firm. She looks up from her drink to see him watching her like he can’t quite believe she’s real. She knows she’s been wearing the same expression since she walked through the gate. “I thought I was never going to see you again --” He breaks off at this and Sansa reaches out to touch his arm.

“We’ve all suffered more than we were ever supposed to,” Sansa replies. “But now we’re going home.”

“I don’t have enough men to take on the Boltons,” Jon says, slouching in his chair, an image of the boy told off by Maester Luwin for tormenting the horses. “Not even with the wildlings willing to join the fight.”

“You’re the Lord Commander and we’re the oldest remaining Starks. We’ll rally the North around us and we’ll take back our home. Jon,” she sighs, moves closer. “Jon, if we don’t do this, what’s left to fight for?”

Her hand touches his arm again. They’re still not over the shock of finding each other, the sharpest and sweetest ray of light stretching as far back into this war as Sansa can remember. She allows her hand to slip down to hold his, her thumb brushing over a myriad of scars. They both have a lot of stories to tell.

He blinks, twists his grimace into a smile, and yes, this is it. This is what Sansa has been hoping for. This is her chance to be a part of a movement to make a difference instead of standing silently and desperately strategizing from the side of men. Jon is going to help her take back Winterfell because Jon is her brother and he loves her but also because Jon is the Lord Commander and he has the power to move men into battle to fight for what is right.

“This isn’t princesses and knights anymore, Sansa,” he says, not patronising her but reminding her of what’s changed and what they’ve come from. “The monster isn’t going to fall from a gust of wind.”

“There are rumours of dragons in Essos, the dead batter at the Wall, and you yourself have risen from the dead.” Sansa gets to her feet, her hand passing over the curls of Jon’s hair. “We’re not going to get anywhere, Jon, if you don’t have a little bit of belief.”

“There’s the Sansa I remember,” he says, like he’s been missing her all this time the way Sansa has been missing stubborn Jon with his sharp little jokes and the tiny quirk of his mouth when he grants a rare smile. “Let’s find Tormund.”

Brienne comments on the fact that Jon seems remarkably well-adjusted for someone who has been murdered and returned to life. When Sansa mentions this to Jon over their meal later on he mutters something about the power of Starks and Sansa feels a flush of happiness pulse deep within her. It’s not much, they’ve still got so far to go, but to be back with someone from her family, someone who knows her, is more than enough.

  


.

 

cousin

 

The march to Winterfell is cold and long. Brienne sticks to one side of Sansa and Pod on the other. To Sansa, this is the most pleasant it could be. Despite her longings for the South and all the fashion and glamour that is found beyond the Neck, the winter of the North has always been kinder to her. Anyone can suffer the heat on the islands; it takes someone who has been born within the snowy lands of the North to survive here.

In contrast, the battle at their arrival at the castle is bloody and hot, both side burning fast and frantic as they fight for the upper hand. Sansa focuses on evacuating the innocent servants kept there by Bolton threats before she makes her way up the staircase to where she once slept. From here she watches Brienna, tall, brave Brienne, fight four men at once, her sword flashing so fast Sansa can barely tell who’s living and who’s dying until at last Brienne is the one to walk away, a breath swallowed before she’s attacked by another three.

The Sansa from before never took into account the bloodiness and the horrors of the wars that led to the romantic tales and the sweet songs but now she knows that this is all too necessary. Diplomacy gets nowhere in a world with the power so unbalanced people are still spinning from the fall. So she dignifies the battle by staying out of the way but keeping watch as her and Jon’s forces push the Boltons into corners where they have no way of knowing how to get out. 

It ends with Jon running his sword through Ramsay Snow’s middle and adding another through his neck for good measure. It ends with Ramsay Snow’s falling to the ground, his mouth open in a scream and his hands bloody. It ends with Ramsay Snow’s men dropping their weapons and raising their arms in surrender to the wildlings and the Night’s Watch.

It ends altogether too quietly for an ache that has been lodged in Sansa's throat for many moons. 

Jon is injured by a stray arrow early on in the battle but he ignores it to protect his men and so when everyone is celebrating he collapses and everything grinds to a halt. No one is sure of the longevity of a man returned from the dead. Is a small wound enough to take him for good?

It isn’t, but Jon calls for Sansa as he lies in bed and is treated for the pain, the arrowhead on the table beside him, and he tells her something like these are the last minutes he has in this world.

“I’m not your brother, Sansa,” he says, eyes fluttering shut as the milk of the poppy begins to take its effect.

Forgive Sansa for her emotions being all over the place. This, along with the victory of being back in their home as well as Jon spread out on the bed in front of her, is understandably enough to have her weeping. Surely, after the lengths it took to find one another, Jon isn’t going to turn her away now that he has won back Winterfell.

Jon interprets this all correctly, bleary as he is. “No, Sansa, what I meant is that I’m your cousin.”

And he explains everything Aemon Targaryen told him about his father and his mother and the subtle ways this changes everything.

“Well,” Sansa says when he’s finished, “for what it’s worth, I’m glad you’re still a Stark.”

Jon laughs then coughs when that movement jolts his wound. “It’s worth a lot, Sansa,” is what he says when he’s recovered. He moves his arm, opening up half of the bed, and she settles in beside him. “Davos thinks I have a claim.”

At this stage with a Lannister on the throne and Tyrells stationed around the South Sansa has lost track of who has legitimate claims stemming from what lineage. She can’t imagine Jon in the South with his dark dark hair and all his furs, Ghost uncomfortable in the unbearable heat.

But she has to ask, “Are you going to make a move? The North will support you,” and she knows that he hears _I will support you._

“I don’t think I’m made for ruling,” he says quietly.

“I think you need to stay here,” Sansa replies. “I think Winterfell needs you.” Again, he hears what she means: _I need you_.

He’s not her brother in the traditional sense but he’s the one she trusts more than anyone else at the moment. He’s who she turns to when she is approached with questions of what happens next and he is who she seeks out when Brienne is training and Pod is with the wildlings and all Sansa needs is quiet.

Quiet is hard to find in a castle bustling with the joy of survival but here, in Jon’s room by the tower, Sansa finds it.

  


.

 

partner

 

It takes time to rebuild Winterfell from the ruins it descended into through fire from Theon and hatred from Ramsay Bolton. It takes even more time for the North to pull itself back together, for it to structure itself into a formidable fighting force, for the Starks to struggle back into that position of power they once took for granted.

Sansa and Jon are at the centre of this return to life. Sansa can’t help but feel that, despite the familial roots that tie them to the place, that they are both well suited to the task of bringing something back from ruin. For Jon, this is a literal rebirth; a chance to grow into something different but no less strong and stable as before. This is a chance for Sansa to shake off the scales of Alayne once and for all and allow the North to see her as the capable young woman who has defied sceptics and non-believers ever since she made it back from the South alive.

“Stannis offered me Winterfell,” Jon told her before they left Castle Black.

“It wasn’t his to offer,” Sansa had replied, wary of the dead king and all that he stood for.

“I told him it belonged to you,” Jon then said, his arm warm against hers as they watched the wildlings and the men of the Watch prepare for the march ahead. “I’m not sure he liked that answer.”

“We’ll run it together, Jon. You know our home in ways only a Stark could -- with you and I at the head we’ll build it into what it was before.”

And Jon had nodded. “The Starks reborn?”

Sansa remembers nudging him, saying that the Starks had never died despite the persistence of their enemies, and now, as she walks through the halls she knows that it’s true. Through all the invaders and the flames Winterfell has been there waiting for them to return. This is where they’ll rebuild, both literally and figuratively. This is where they’ll plan their revenge.

Throughout this she and Jon have become closer. They talk not only of the things they have gone through since they parted but also of their shared past and of their possibilities of the future. Sansa likes being able to tease out laughter from Jon when she recounts memories or things Brienne has said. When Jon laughs Sansa breathes easier because that’s what she takes as the sign that things will get better.

They sit up late into the night with plans spread out in front of them and stressed discussions of where to find the rest of their family. More times than Sansa can count these nights have ended with the two of the curling into the bed, a thrilling worry at getting caught when they wake in the morning and try to hide the evidence of their shared night as though they’ve been doing something wrong.

“I’m glad we got this,” Sansa says quietly, her head dropping onto Jon’s shoulder as they pore over yet another report from the Mormonts and their scouring for Bran and Rickon in the East.

Jon’s voice is gruff when he murmurs, “This has been like something out of another life, this time with you.”

“We’ve been given second chances, Jon,” Sansa says. “We need to make the most of them this time.”

“No wishing to be somewhere else?”

“I’m never leaving the North again,” she says, half of it lost in Jon’s shoulder when she turns her face into him but he hears what she says and hums in agreement.

“And we’ll never be separated again.” He sounds unsure about this part, as though he doesn’t know if Sansa wants him to leave, but, and this is the romantic wakening up in her again, for Jon to leave would be akin to losing a limb, she is sure of it. She cringes at her cool dismissal of him in the past and her naivety that her siblings would always be there to come back to.

“We’ll never be separated again,” she repeats. They fall asleep with their furs tucked around them and their fingers intertwined and when Sansa wakes she yawns, stretches, and feels something close to contentment.

The first time Jon touches Sansa in a way no brother should touch a sister she is startled into a gasp that slips from her throat to Jon’s. After her dreams of love were shattered by the treatment from men she wanted nothing to do with she had all but given up on love, content to live through Winterfell and her family.

But, _oh_ , Jon is kissing her and she's scrabbling at his clothes to kiss him back. She's never wanted to kiss back before. This is what the princes fought for; this is what the kings gave up their thrones for.

He tastes sweet, tart from dinner lingering along his lips, and Sansa leans into it, desperate. Jon laughs into her mouth, steadies her, and kisses her harder. His hands sweep along her sides, up into her hair, somehow so gentle and dangerous at the same time -- gentle as he holds her; dangerous as he tugs Sansa so willingly into going further and further until she’s given him everything she has. She finds that she wants to lie with Jon and that realisation has her flushing and backing away momentarily, lips delightfully swollen and aching.

“ _Jon_ ,” she says, and like so many times before he knows what she means from that one word.

“Is this what you want, Sansa?” And he doesn’t mean bedding her but the love and the commitments that come with what they’re doing. “It’s what I want,” he adds, wary of spooking her into denying everything.

“Isn’t this wrong? Jon, we are of one blood.”

“Not one blood,” Jon corrects. “I have Targaryen blood within me equal to the Stark -- don’t we deserve this, Sansa?”

She steps back into his space and kisses him. “You make me happy, Jon,” and that’s something she's learning to grab on to. She smiles against his mouth, giddy with it, and clings to this feeling of happiness swelling in her belly. 

When Sansa was younger her dreams consisted of blond princes with pale eyes and the soft accent of the South. These faceless princes were gracious and kind, bending to her every whim as they ruled the Seven Kingdoms. It's almost funny how far removed from these dreams from past times Jon is with his broad shoulders, dark hair, and gruff voice. It's almost funny but it's not quite because Sansa has realised now how little she knew back then about both the world and herself. Now she knows that after all those false dreams and the betrothals to men now dead or exiled that the man she needs is standing in front of her and that there's nothing funny about the way she feels. This is how she's grown. 

 

.

  


When the rest of the Starks straggle home in various forms of life, their direwolves sniffing around their feet, they meet their sister and their brother-turned-cousin and they fall into an easiness that is bred from desperation. They all have so much to say, so much to unload from their shoulders, but everyone is content to sit by the fire and simply soak up the presence of the family they thought they'd lost.

Time passes and things mellow out and Jon and Sansa stop hiding behind doors to kiss or stifle the smiles they send one another.

“After all this,” Arya says, arms folded across her chest and eyes narrowed when she rounds a corner to find them, “and this is the part where I question the world,” but she's joking, that's clear in her smile. She knows, too, just like Jon and Sansa, that they have more in common than anyone would have ever thought and stronger roots of love than anyone would ever have known.

When Sansa sleeps at night it’s with Jon beside her and Ghost curled by their feet. She sleeps in a room in a corridor where Bran sleeps, where Rickon sleeps, where Arya sleeps. When Sansa left Winterfell all that time ago she had taken her family for granted, the possibility of never seeing them again not crossing her mind as she set her eyes on the prince and the throne. Now she is home, she is where she belongs, and she wants nothing more than for her family to remain in their home with her.

Jon’s nose rubs her neck, he snuffles softly, his hand heavy and warm on her waist. This is the biggest change from her life before, this readjustment of her brother to her partner, but it’s one she’s happy with. Sansa knows there’s more to the running of the world than the happiness of certain individuals but the North is gearing up to make another stand against the Iron Throne, to finish what Robb started with Sansa on the Northern Throne, and so this is the time to gather themselves and to make the most of the snatches of happiness they’ve been allowed.

This is how they complete their family: with strength and love and the foundations of their home surrounding them.

 

 


End file.
